Massive Solar Powered Drone
During the last couple of decades, we’ve seen the internet change the way life is lived. It’s hard to imagine a time without smart phones and internet now, but there are still around 5 billion people around the world who lack consistent access to the world wide web. Facebook has a plan to change that. The company recently announced that they plan to bring internet access to far corners of the globe from a large fleet of solar powered drones. This sounds eerily familiar to a similar project that Google started working on a few years back known as Project Loon – except even more ambitious.
Last year, Facebook purchased UK based drone designer Ascenta, so the social network company now literally has its own drone division in charge of designing an entire fleet of UAVs. The Facebook drone design is expected to include a wingspan similar to a Boeing 767 – 156 feet from wingtip to wingtip. These drones, code named Aquila, will supposedly be able to spend upwards of three months in the air without returning to the surface, relying on nothing more than solar power. Despite its enormous size, these Facebook drones weigh less than a car – and will apparently use foam as a major component of its construction which helps keep the drone’s weight low. It will use a system of lasers to send the internet down to users from its cruising altitude which is expected to range between 60,000 and 90,000 feet.
The first test flights should happen as soon as this summer, and the program should hit fully operational status sometime in the next 5-10 years. Facebook estimates that a fully functional fleet will include nearly 1,000 drones and could take advantage of satellites in areas where flying drones is not a plausible option.
So, next time you are waiting on the Mt. Everest base camp or hiking through some remote Fjords in Norway, you just might have access to Facebook’s drone based internet. Facebook undoubtedly stands to earn an enormous amount of money from this project, but we can all thank Mark Zuckerberg when we successfully connect to wifi on our adventures to the most remote corners of the planet.
